Complaint At least commit to it

[Bananabits111]

I'll be honest, I don't completely agree with the rules here. I'll follow them, but I still don't like all of them. But could you guys at least commit to them? At least enforce them properly. Don't get players to lie and say that they won't break certain rules just because you don't feel like continuing the conversation, or because even though they broke the rules (and you even acknowledged that they did), it would be "stupid" to ban them over that.

Did I write this after seeing the stuff on another thread? Yes. But I think this is more general, so I don't think it's peanut posting. That wasn't my intention.

[ZeWaka]

What is your proposed method of enforcing that someone will keep to their word? After all, all we can do is ask people to follow the rules.
Other than just banning them the next time they break the rules, which isn't really stopping their actions at all, merely applying consequences.
I'm very curious on what this free internet game can do that every single world government can't accomplish.
Or perhaps you're more of a fan of the thoughtcrimes perspective, and we should just ban people preemptively?

[Bananabits111]

What is your proposed method of enforcing that someone will keep to their word? After all, all we can do is ask people to follow the rules.
Other than just banning them the next time they break the rules, which isn't really stopping their actions at all, merely applying consequences.
I'm very curious on what this free internet game can do that every single world government can't accomplish.
Or perhaps you're more of a fan of the thoughtcrimes perspective, and we should just ban people preemptively?

You could start by not telling people to lie

[klushy225]

not an admin, but doesn't it literally say in the riles NOT to lie to the admins? It says that pretty clearly

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yeah it says in big capital letters:

"take the time to talk to them about it and answer their questions HONESTLY. We have multiple ways of telling if you are lying about stuff, and if we can't trust what you're saying, there's no point to talking so we're probably going to have to reach for the banhammer. "

[Cal]

This is a really wacky thing to get hung up on about a ban that has nothing to do with you at all

[UrsulaMejor]

Did either of you read the conversation in question or are you just upset at the idea of it?

Once someone has been warned, they need to acknowledge the warning. Regardless of what they say, what i care about is if the behavior continues. If they say earnestly say they're going to stop, but then don't stop, the actions are what matter. If, in the moment, they lie about stopping, but then never do it again, that's a win for me.

I am a human being.

Edit: Not to mention, me getting exasperated in a single conversation is not policy. It is a thing that was said in a single conversation, after 13 grueling minutes of someone arguing something that merely needed a 10 second acknowledgement.

I honestly have no idea why you're so stuck on this, when the context makes this obvious and you're basically getting mad over literal nothingness.

[Sov]

Enforcement of the rules ultimately comes down to the discretion of the administrator handling the case.

We do not have hard-set guidelines for ban lengths or allowable warnings for offenses. Instead, we opt to allow staff to use their judgement based on the context of the situation, the histories of those involved, and our interactions over ahelp chat.

This does mean accepting a degree of inconsistency with the handling of punishments, but it allows staff greater agency to handle rule breakers autonomously. Of course, should a player feel that an admin's decision against them is egregiously out of scale with what transpired, they can submit a complaint/appeal to have others weigh in.

[Bananabits111]

Did either of you read the conversation in question or are you just upset at the idea of it?

Once someone has been warned, they need to acknowledge the warning. Regardless of what they say, what i care about is if the behavior continues. If they say earnestly say they're going to stop, but then don't stop, the actions are what matter.  If, in the moment, they lie about stopping, but then never do it again, that's a win for me.

I am a human being.

Edit: Not to mention, me getting exasperated in a single conversation is not policy. It is a thing that was said in a single conversation, after 13 grueling minutes of someone arguing something that merely needed a 10 second acknowledgement.

I honestly have no idea why you're so stuck on this, when the context makes this obvious and you're basically getting mad over literal nothingness.

If you care so little about what players say, you might as well either tell players that what they're doing is wrong and leave them alone, or ban them right away. There was no need to encourage them to lie.

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Enforcement of the rules ultimately comes down to the discretion of the administrator handling the case.

We do not have hard-set guidelines for ban lengths or allowable warnings for offenses. Instead, we opt to allow staff to use their judgement based on the context of the situation, the histories of those involved, and our interactions over ahelp chat.

This does mean accepting a degree of inconsistency with the handling of punishments, but it allows staff greater agency to handle rule breakers autonomously. Of course, should a player feel that an admin's decision against them is egregiously out of scale with what transpired, they can submit a complaint/appeal to have others weigh in.

You guys are a team. Teams should be unified. At the very least, you should have hard guidelines that you follow for punishments. And I bet that if you showed the guidelines next to the rules in the wiki, there'd be a lot less confusion and complaining.

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not an admin, but doesn't it literally say in the riles NOT to lie to the admins? It says that pretty clearly

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yeah it says in big capital letters:

"take the time to talk to them about it and answer their questions HONESTLY. We have multiple ways of telling if you are lying about stuff, and if we can't trust what you're saying, there's no point to talking so we're probably going to have to reach for the banhammer. "

Tell that to Ursula

[Adhara In Space]

If you care so little about what players say, you might as well either tell players that what they're doing is wrong and leave them alone, or ban them right away. There was no need to encourage them to lie.

I fail to see how you understand this as UrsulaMajor failing to care. If she didn't care about making sure that this specific person understood the rules and wouldn't break them again, she would have just banned them right away. The person was drawing out the argument because they didn't want to admit that they broke the rules. Emily  (as she said in this thread) was exasperated and asked them why they couldn't even lie and say they were wrong and they wouldn't do it again. You seem really hung up on this, which confuses me. It is pretty blindingly obvious to me (someone who was not involved and is just reading the logs) that the person who was breaking the rules was just upset and thought that if they refused to say they broke the rules, they would not be punished for breaking the rules. In this case, the player lying does not matter at all in the context of the rules. Emily knows they broke the rules. They have been told they broke the rules. They are being asked not to break the rules again.
Asking them to lie in this case is letting them shoot themselves in the foot. If they refuse to say the thing they have been explicitly asked to say, they will be banned.

You guys are a team. Teams should be unified. At the very least, you should have hard guidelines that you follow for punishments. And I bet that if you showed the guidelines next to the rules in the wiki, there'd be a lot less confusion and complaining.

From our rules page:

Different admins have different styles. Although we all follow the same general directives, some admins are more or less forgiving on certain issues than others. If you do a thing that gets you a dayban from one admin, and your buddy does the same thing later and gets away with just a talking-to, that is not a thing to complain about. If you DO feel that an admin's actions were inappropriate, please feel absolutely free to make use of the Admin Complaints forum - we won't punish you for posting a complaint.

If we were all unified in opinion and behavior, why should we have a team of staff versus just one automated robot or super staff member who administrates the game?
We are a small team made up of members who were all brought on board because we trusted each and every one. Everybody has differences in personality, which manifests in differences in enforcement and temperament. We make this explicitly clear in our rules. This is a complex social game where people can break the rules in complex ways. There is no structure we could create to automatically doll out punishments that would be more effective than just trusting eachother to make the game a better place.

Tell that to Ursula

This is a pointless snipe that doesn't deserve an in depth reply.

[According_tome]

I think judging Ursula out of single line is unfair in this example. They spend 15 minutes to tell a player dont sabotage the station and all player needed to say was ok I wont sabotage the station as non antagonist. This lasted this long because it was such small thing that It doesn't warrant a ban. All the player needed to do was saying ok I won't grief and that would be it. If they were uncaring this would go as: Admin: Don't grief, Player: I will grief, BAN. As admin they tried really hard to explain player the rules and when player didn't understand rules for 15 minutes they banned them and in ban message told acknowledge the rules to comeback. So I wouldn't call Ursula uncaring and I would actaully say they did it pretty well.

[Bananabits111]

If you care so little about what players say, you might as well either tell players that what they're doing is wrong and leave them alone, or ban them right away. There was no need to encourage them to lie.

I fail to see how you understand this as UrsulaMajor failing to care. If she didn't care about making sure that this specific person understood the rules and wouldn't break them again, she would have just banned them right away. The person was drawing out the argument because they didn't want to admit that they broke the rules. Emily  (as she said in this thread) was exasperated and asked them why they couldn't even lie and say they were wrong and they wouldn't do it again. You seem really hung up on this, which confuses me. It is pretty blindingly obvious to me (someone who was not involved and is just reading the logs) that the person who was breaking the rules was just upset and thought that if they refused to say they broke the rules, they would not be punished for breaking the rules. In this case, the player lying does not matter at all in the context of the rules. Emily knows they broke the rules. They have been told they broke the rules. They are being asked not to break the rules again.
Asking them to lie in this case is letting them shoot themselves in the foot. If they refuse to say the thing they have been explicitly asked to say, they will be banned.

For someone who deleted my comment for peanut posting, you have a lot to say about a ban you weren't there for.

If you care so little about what players say, you might as well either tell players that what they're doing is wrong and leave them alone, or ban them right away. There was no need to encourage them to lie.

I fail to see how you understand this as UrsulaMajor failing to care. If she didn't care about making sure that this specific person understood the rules and wouldn't break them again, she would have just banned them right away. The person was drawing out the argument because they didn't want to admit that they broke the rules. Emily  (as she said in this thread) was exasperated and asked them why they couldn't even lie and say they were wrong and they wouldn't do it again. You seem really hung up on this, which confuses me. It is pretty blindingly obvious to me (someone who was not involved and is just reading the logs) that the person who was breaking the rules was just upset and thought that if they refused to say they broke the rules, they would not be punished for breaking the rules. In this case, the player lying does not matter at all in the context of the rules. Emily knows they broke the rules. They have been told they broke the rules. They are being asked not to break the rules again.
Asking them to lie in this case is letting them shoot themselves in the foot. If they refuse to say the thing they have been explicitly asked to say, they will be banned.

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I think judging Ursula out of single line is unfair in this example. They spend 15 minutes to tell a player dont sabotage the station and all player needed to say was ok I wont sabotage the station as non antagonist. This lasted this long because it was such small thing that It doesn't warrant a ban. All the player needed to do was saying ok I won't grief and that would be it. If they were uncaring this would go as: Admin: Don't grief, Player: I will grief, BAN. As admin they tried really hard to explain player the rules and when player didn't understand rules for 15 minutes they banned them and in ban message  told acknowledge the rules to comeback. So I wouldn't call Ursula uncaring and I would actaully say they did it pretty well.

My problem isn't the ban, it's that she was willing to not do anything if the player just lied. Where's the integrity in that?

[Adhara In Space]

For someone who deleted my comment for peanut posting, you have a lot to say about a ban you weren't there for.

Forgiving that this is another pointless snipe, I want to point out that you made this admin feedback post about the general conduct of the entire admin staff. In fact, you state that it isn't just about the complaint thread where I deleted your comment for breaking our forum rules. So I felt that as a staff member I was invited to respond to this post. Now the only example you provided in your complaint was the exchange between UrsulaMajor and the person who was banned for welding doors as a security officer on the roleplay server. So in order to actually engage with this complaint at all I would have to engage with your claim that this interaction was poor conduct on UrsulaMajor's part. So I explained why I did not think it was misconduct and why I was confused that you were accusing UrsulaMajor of lacking integrity.

My problem isn't the ban, it's that she was willing to not do anything if the player just lied. Where's the integrity in that?

As a staff member, we cannot read a player's thoughts. If we are asking someone to say that they will not break the rules again, we have no way of knowing if they are telling the truth or lying. And it doesn't really matter either way. Say we let someone off with a warning and they say "I understand what I did was wrong, I won't break the rules again". The best outcome is that they don't break the rules again. So whether or not they were lying when they said that doesn't matter if they don't break the rules again. And if they were lying and they do break the rules again, we can remove them from the game or give a sterner warning or do whatever we decide is best.

Back to the specific situation, UrsulaMajor was asking the player to say "I understand that welding doors as a security officer on RP is against the rules. I won't do it again." When the player did not say this after an extended discussion, UrsulaMajor told the player that they were just being warned and that they just needed to agree to the warning. If the player was lying or telling the truth about understanding the rules, they would still be warned. The outcome of this interaction would not change if they said that. What would change the outcome was if the player continued to argue with UrsulaMajor about whether or not they broke the rules.

At the end of the day, staff have the final say about what is rulebreaking behavior and what is not. This player did not want to accept that, and would rather be banned than abide by the rules (and admit that they were in the wrong).

Lets say someone cheats on a test. Their professor goes "That's bad, I'm failing you for this test. Do you understand that cheating is bad?". The student says "Yeah that was bad. I won't do it again." Does the outcome change if the student was lying to the professor or not? The professor can't read the student's thoughts or see the future so they can't know if the student will cheat again, so the professor just carries out the punishment and moves on. Does the professor lack integrity in this situation?

[Bananabits111]

For someone who deleted my comment for peanut posting, you have a lot to say about a ban you weren't there for.

Forgiving that this is another pointless snipe, I want to point out that you made this admin feedback post about the general conduct of the entire admin staff. In fact, you state that it isn't just about the complaint thread where I deleted your comment for breaking our forum rules. So I felt that as a staff member I was invited to respond to this post. Now the only example you provided in your complaint was the exchange between UrsulaMajor and the person who was banned for welding doors as a security officer on the roleplay server. So in order to actually engage with this complaint at all I would have to engage with your claim that this interaction was poor conduct on UrsulaMajor's part. So I explained why I did not think it was misconduct and why I was confused that you were accusing UrsulaMajor of lacking integrity.

My problem isn't the ban, it's that she was willing to not do anything if the player just lied. Where's the integrity in that?

As a staff member, we cannot read a player's thoughts. If we are asking someone to say that they will not break the rules again, we have no way of knowing if they are telling the truth or lying. And it doesn't really matter either way. Say we let someone off with a warning and they say "I understand what I did was wrong, I won't break the rules again". The best outcome is that they don't break the rules again. So whether or not they were lying when they said that doesn't matter if they don't break the rules again. And if they were lying and they do break the rules again, we can remove them from the game or give a sterner warning or do whatever we decide is best.

Back to the specific situation, UrsulaMajor was asking the player to say "I understand that welding doors as a security officer on RP is against the rules. I won't do it again." When the player did not say this after an extended discussion, UrsulaMajor told the player that they were just being warned and that they just needed to agree to the warning. If the player was lying or telling the truth about understanding the rules, they would still be warned. The outcome of this interaction would not change if they said that. What would change the outcome was if the player continued to argue with UrsulaMajor about whether or not they broke the rules.

At the end of the day, staff have the final say about what is rulebreaking behavior and what is not. This player did not want to accept that, and would rather be banned than abide by the rules (and admit that they were in the wrong).

Lets say someone cheats on a test. Their professor goes "That's bad, I'm failing you for this test. Do you understand that cheating is bad?". The student says "Yeah that was bad. I won't do it again." Does the outcome change if the student was lying to the professor or not? The professor can't read the student's thoughts or see the future so they can't know if the student will cheat again, so the professor just carries out the punishment and moves on. Does the professor lack integrity in this situation?

Say the player does lie. Have you considered what they could do before getting banned again? And the example with the professor isn't the same as this, because the student doesn't impact anyone else by cheating.

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Nothing is lost if the student decides to cheat again.

[Adhara In Space]

Say the player does lie. Have you considered what they could do before getting banned again?

Yes, they could actually break the rules again. But that's the risk we take when we give warnings to people, because most people who are warned take it to heart.
These are some of the judgement calls staff members make when confronting rulebreaking behavior.
Basically, if we say "Stop saying slurs" and someone says "Sorry wont happen again", that's a good outcome for us. If they end up doing it again, we can just ban them. If they don't, then we've got someone who will play and follow the rules.

And the example with the professor isn't the same as this, because the student doesn't impact anyone else by cheating. Nothing is lost if the student decides to cheat again.

That is a flaw in my example. But the intent was to illustrate that the professor decides what to do when the student breaks the rules, and the student lying only matters if they decide to cheat again despite knowing that they'll get caught. Hopefully that helps illustrate what I was trying to get across.

[Bananabits111]

Say the player does lie. Have you considered what they could do before getting banned again?

Yes, they could actually break the rules again. But that's the risk we take when we give warnings to people, because most people who are warned take it to heart.
These are some of the judgement calls staff members make when confronting rulebreaking behavior.
Basically, if we say "Stop saying slurs" and someone says "Sorry wont happen again", that's a good outcome for us. If they end up doing it again, we can just ban them. If they don't, then we've got someone who will play and follow the rules.

And the example with the professor isn't the same as this, because the student doesn't impact anyone else by cheating. Nothing is lost if the student decides to cheat again.

That is a flaw in my example. But the intent was to illustrate that the professor decides what to do when the student breaks the rules, and the student lying only matters if they decide to cheat again despite knowing that they'll get caught. Hopefully that helps illustrate what I was trying to get across.

Ok

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I guess that makes sense